Empowered Energy

06/30/2023

Honored to be selected as a 125th Anniversary Fellow for the Penn State College of Earth and Mineral Sciences. How about those Nittany Lions!

10/16/2022

I enjoyed moderating last week's Colorado 3rd Congressional District forum between incumbent Lauren Boebert (R) and challenger Adam Frisch (D). Thank you to the League of Women Voters for the invitation to be part of this event. Video is available at

The recording of this event is owned by the League of Women Voters of Colorado and may not be used for any purpose without the explicit written permission of...

01/28/2020

Video now available of my presentation at AREDAY 2019 last summer. Enjoy!

09/06/2019

It was great to be included among the speakers at the recent AREDAY 2019 conference in Snowmass, Colorado. My presentation on "Energy Economics: What Does 100% Renewable Look Like?" focused on the need for well-informed analysis to enable well-informed policy choices. The range of topics covered and the enthusiastic commitment of each of the speakers to their topic was really inspirational.

The Annual Summit brings together over 100 cross-sector speakers and includes a film festival and concert.

06/05/2019

My presentation on the "Levelized Cost of Returned Energy (LCORE) Analysis for Comparing Hydrogen End-Uses & Battery Storage Economics" was well received and raised lots of questions at the recent IAEE International Conference in Montreal. I left the conference once again totally inspired by all that is happening in energy.

04/01/2019

Delighted to have delivered the kickoff keynote presentation at last week's ICEPAG 2019 Microgrid Global Summit in Irvine, California. This is one of my favorite events each year; I always come away inspired at all the potential in today's energy markets.

Held at the University of California, Irvine, ICEPAG 2019 supports the annual presentation of the Microgrid Global Summit, an update on the technologies, applications, and roles of microgrids in the smart grid of the future. The 3-day Colloquium is a valued balance of academia, industry, national la...

02/05/2019

Snowdown Spellebration 2019! Empowered Energy's Wonder Women didn't have such a good showing, but we had fun and it was good to be back. Congratulations to the Super Spellers for their winning performance!

01/03/2019

2018 passed by in a whirlwind, starting with a settlement in a major natural gas litigation in which I was the primary damages expert. Much of the year involved ongoing work in hydrogen energy storage and alternative fuels for heavy duty vehicles with the Advanced Power and Energy Program at UC-Irvine. I also enjoyed catching up with colleagues during the USAEE/IAEE North American Conference in Washington D.C., speaking on community solar energy. Here's to health and happiness in the new year!

06/14/2018

Just finishing a project on using otherwise-curtailed renewable energy to fuel electrolyzers to split water to make renewable hydrogen. Exploring the economics of different use pathways for the hydrogen, including pipeline injection, conversion to renewable natural gas, and fuel for fuel cell vehicles. A different type of energy storage, allowing greater scale and longer-duration storage than batteries.

07/25/2016

Totally inspired after spending two days with the amazing cohort of 60 women in senior positions who make up this year's Leadership California cohort. Spoke on an energy panel sponsored by SoCal Gas as part of the California Issues and Trends session; had one of the best, most interactive Q&A sessions ever. Thank you all for a fabulous experience.

07/08/2016

Just back from a two-week Scandinavian vacation following the IAEE International Conference in Bergen, Norway. Hosted at the Norwegian School of Economics, it was IAEE's largest conference ever; lots of great speakers with Distributed Energy Resources ("DERs") as the sub-text of almost everything.

04/11/2016

Electric utilities have historically been islands of constancy amid the business world’s sea of change. I have consulted for and with them for 21 years, seeing my share of business plans that could be summarized as, “Whatever we did last year, do a little more of it this year – but not too much.”